First Phase of Inbound Marketing Explained
You’ve probably heard of inbound marketing but you don’t know how to start implementing it, here you will find all about the first phase of Inbound Marketing.
What is the first phase of Inbound Marketing?
The first phase of inbound marketing is the attract stage. At this initial marketing stage, the prospect is provided with the right content, at the right place, and at the right time through search engine optimisation and social media marketing.
How do we attract prospects to our business?
You don’t want just any traffic to your website, it’s no use for you or your business that a person that is not interested in your product or services visits your web because they won’t become customers, so you have to ask yourself who are the “right” people?
The right people visiting your site are ideal customers, which are also known as buyer personas. These are the people you need to be creating content for because that is who you want to attract to your website.
Create your Buyer Personas
In the First Phase of Inbound Marketing you need to create your buyer personas. A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers.
When creating your buyer persona(s), consider including customer demographics, behavior patterns, motivations, and goals. The more detailed you are, the better.
Buyer personas provide tremendous structure and insight for your company. A detailed buyer persona will help you determine where to focus your time, guide product development, and allow for alignment across the organization.
As a result, you will be able to attract the most valuable visitors, leads, and customers to your business.
Create your Adequate Content for your Prospects
Great, now that you have your buyer personas profile you are all set and ready to engage in the second part of the First phase of inbound marketing: Creating content.
Content is a really important tool in inbound marketing, it’s what keeps prospects coming to your page and back for more. Content has moved far past just a way to get ahead of your competition. Creating Blog posts and premium content offers are now completely necessary for your digital and inbound marketing strategy.
This will definitely drive more traffic to your website and increase lead conversion.
Search Engine Optimisation is key
You already thought about amazing content, that’s perfect! But… are people gonna be able to find it on Google? You need to think about those kind of things! That’s why SEO ( Search Engine Optimisation) is key in the first phase of inbound marketing.
You need to make sure you are targeting the appropriate keywords. There’s a balance of trying to target keywords that you want to search for versus what people are actually searching for when they are researching producing and services.
You can learn what people are searching for using Google’s tools like Google Search Console. When optimising your website and content, focus on keywords that are built around your products/services, what challenges you are solving for the visitor, how your products can help them, frequently asked questions, etc.
Use social media to start
Social media is a great tool for companies that are just starting, the exposure it offers companies is perfect to jump start your campaign in the first phase of inbound marketing.
Social media is a fantastic way to not only engage with your customers, but also attract new followers to your brand. Using social media as a lead generation tool is not just about posting content, but also monitoring your social media channels to see who is talking about your brand, and also your industry in general.
How can The Inbound Project help me with the first phase of Inbound Marketing ?
If you are having trouble with the first phase of inbound marketing, contact us and we will give you a free consultation on how you can start.
You can also read about the second phase of inbound marketing here